20th Anniversary of the Death of Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya: Putin Showed His True Colors Even Back Then

On the 20th anniversary of the death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) commemorates her courageous advocacy for the people of Chechnya. Politkovskaya was shot and killed in Moscow on October 7, 2006—the birthday of Russian President Vladimir Putin. For years prior, she had reported on war crimes and severe human rights violations committed by the Russian army in Chechnya, repeatedly pointing to the political responsibility of Putin and, later, of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Putin had installed.

Together with Chechen women human rights activists, Politkovskaya documented the consequences of the Russian war against the Chechen civilian population. Her reports from Grozny and from numerous cities and villages in Chechnya appeared in the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose co-founder was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

During a chance encounter on a flight to Ingushetia, Politkovskaya told the STP that while the whole world was focused on the prisoners at Guantánamo, no one was paying attention to the Chechens in the filtration camps. “What happened in Chechnya back then faded from international view far too quickly. Today, the Russian army is using similar methods in Ukraine to terrorize people through torture,” says Sarah Reinke, Executive Director for Human Rights at the STP, who still remembers the meeting with Politkovskaya well.

The STP, too, has been working intensively on behalf of the civilian population since the beginning of the Second Chechen War. In a report spanning more than 300 pages, the organization documented systematic crimes against the Chechen population and assessed them as targeted genocide.

Politically, however, such warnings were met with little response for a long time. Chechen refugees were considered to be particularly severely traumatized. Nevertheless, their plight was often not adequately acknowledged in Germany. “The responsible politicians in Germany—especially Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was bound to Putin by a close ‘male friendship’—ignored the suffering of the Chechens. In retrospect, this proved to be one of the greatest mistakes of postwar German policy. For even back then, Putin’s true face was revealed: imperial violence, the pursuit of great-power status, and the will to achieve his goals through extreme brutality,” says Reinke.

After an initial outcry over the cold-blooded murder of the well-known journalist, politicians quickly returned to business as usual. Just a few months after the murder, Putin was a guest at the Munich Security Conference, where he delivered a speech on February 10, 2007. A seemingly endless series of murders of the Russian president’s political opponents followed.

Chechnya continues to be ruled by “Putin’s bloodhound,” Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov’s authoritarian and repressive regime commits the most egregious human rights violations.

STP calls for keeping alive the memory of Anna Politkovskaya and her reports from Chechnya. “What began in Chechnya in the early days of Putin’s presidency has continued over the years and has been escalating in Ukraine since 2022. This is another reason why it is important to keep alive the memory of the courageous journalist Anna Politkovskaya,” Reinke emphasizes.